It will be interesting the next few days to see how much people will spin to try to blame the news media for the coal company’s failings. Media analysis of the situation is already going on at Poynter Online’s always excellent Internet site.

And you can expect to see hand-wringing about how newspapers and bloggers – which would include some writing here – were too quick to report the news which turned out to literally be too good to be true.

But that’s missing the point. The problem is not how rapidly the news was disseminated but that the news given out was wrong.

Like this:

About Scott Butki

Scott Butki was a newspaper reporter for more than 10 years before making a career change into education... then into special education. He has been doing special education work for about five years
He lives in Austin.
He reads at least 50 books a year and has about 15 author interviews each year and, yes, unlike tv hosts he actually reads each one.
He is an in-house media critic, a recovering Tetris addict and a proud uncle.
He has written articles on practically all topics from zoos to apples and almost everything in between.

Scott, good summary – more journalists should be forced to be embedded in war platoons – this will help give them an understanding of the ‘fog of war’ and information’s murkiness.

Overall, I believe, the news-hunger in the post-modern world has made us all info-whores, and once you’re hooked, there’s no going back.

In regards to copy-fraud in journalism,Journalism is the one solitary respectable profession which honors theft (when committed in the pecuniary interest of a journal,) & admires the thief….However, these same journals combat despicable crimes quite valiantly–when committed in other quarters. (Mark Twain)

A coroner can declare someone dead and that’s how it’s usually handled at accident scenes.

In this case I think part of the problem is that the coroner – and the reporters – didn’t really know until after actually seeing the
bodies.

P.R. will often call someone as being in “critical condition” when they don’t
want to acknowledge death. Cops do this too sometimes.

This is where it gets tricky for reporters – sometimes the hospital
either don’t want give out information (a major trend now with the
HIPPA regulations) or don’t do so in a timely manner so the reporter
has to choose between writing the latest they know or just saying,
essentially, we know something (critical condition) but we don’t
know anything definitive.

If they say ‘ we don’t know” readers get mad. If you say “we think
we know” you get in trouble if you are wrong or used or got bad info.

—–
The part that was driving us crazy when I left the paper was that
under HIPPA – the latest federal privacy rules – hospitals felt they
didn’t have to say (or argued that they can’t legally say) when a
patient dies.

So they would instead say “That person has been transferred to
another facility.”
Now we knew to watch for that and would then press on: as in moved
to another hospital or as in moved to a mortuary? And they would not
always answer.

That drive us bonkers – how do you write, ok, the patient may be
better, may be transferred somewhere for more or may be dead.

Our solution was to then call all other hospitals and hope to find
the missing patient. Not really practical or successful in the end.

End of rant

Scott Butki

Good pieces on the issue in USA Today (and you won’t find me linking there often)

Jay: You are critical of journalists in West Virginia for not being rigorous about confirming the initial report that the miners were alive. I’m not sure you mentioned that the report originated with relay communications from inside the mine and was delivered to the jam-packed command center by squawk box. Have you reported on Mr. Hatfield’s description of how the erroneous report was widely disseminated by people in the command center who had heard it from rescuers within the mine?
I was in West Virginia, where cell phone and Internet connections are haphazard, when you first posted, and I had a few other things to do. So tell me: Have you mentioned the company’s official explanation? It seems relevant, doesn’t it?

I’m also curious about the hypothetical formulation that you recently put in the mouth of the CNN executive, which is written as if incorporating widely-known “facts.” You write: “It is unacceptable to me that for three hours of live television, with our top talent presiding, we’ve got twelve men alive reported as truth, and we never saw those men, no ambulances for them ever moved, and we had no real confirmation. Just a bunch of people saying: yeah, that’s what we heard.”

FYI: a stream of ambulances arrived at the mine as the reports of the “miracle” began circulating. They briefly blocked the road from the mine office to the Sago church, forcing at least one journalist to run between the two venues in search of information.

Since you’ve had several days to find out whether ambulances were, in fact, dispatched, I’m sure you regret the inaccurate impression left by your column. And I’m confident you will correct it as visibly as you disseminated it, and explain where you got, and how you confirmed, the information that you give the color of fact. As I recall, standards for those reporting on the press are at least as high as those to which you hold other journalists.